Even family members would be barred from donating

On October 6, the Colorado Independent and the Rocky Mountain News each published reports that highlighted the lack of transparency behind the ballot measure that demands transparency and "clean government."

Backers of an initiative campaign hyping the values of “clean government” are funding their efforts with anonymous cash, and the mainstream media is starting to catch on. As was reported by The Colorado Independent last week, proponents of an anti-union amendment allegedly focusing on government transparency have funded their campaign with over a million dollars in anonymous cash, making it impossible to know who is supporting the initiative and who paid to put it on the state ballot.
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Now it would appear that the mainstream media is starting to catch on to the transparency questions, with a recent article from The Rocky Mountain News pointing out the same facts:

Clean Government Colorado has raised about $1.5 million to promote Amendment 54. All of that money has come through Colorado At Its Best, a nonprofit founded by Independence Institute fellow Dennis Polhill.

Most recent campaign finance disclosures from Clean Government Colorado show that the nonprofit Colorado At Its Best has already contributed an additional $200,000. The nonprofit has given a total of $1.7 million in anonymous dough to the committee, according to the finance documents.

Media catches on to ‘clean government’ campaign’s transparency woes

Two days later, the Independent took a closer look at the ballot measure itself and discovered "a little-known clause targeting the immediate family members of union officials and supporters."

A so-called “clean government” initiative that would snuff out political contributions given by certain labor unions has a little-known clause targeting the immediate family members of union officials and supporters. If passed by Colorado voters and made into law, Amendment 54 would prohibit both unions and sole-source contractors with the state from giving to political campaigns, and the law even applies to various family members of union officers.

The text of the initiative actually includes “domestic partners” under the definition of family members:

“Immediate family member” means any spouse, child, spouse’s child, son-in-law, daughter-in-law, parent, sibling, grandparent, grandchild, stepbrother, stepsister, stepparent, parent-in-law, brother-in-law, sister-in-law, aunt, niece, nephew, guardian, and 1 domestic partner;

Joel Heinemann, president of the Littleton Firefighter Association located in the Denver area, has been working to oppose Amendment 54, and says he’s worried about how the measure may be interpreted into law.

“It includes language that includes relatives, so it wouldn’t just affect me, it would affect anyone related to me, and politicians would have no idea who to take money from,” Heinemann told The Colorado Independent while being interviewed last week. “They’re going to need fingerprints and a retinal scan before they can take a dime from anybody. It’s just a mess.”

On top of that, Heinemann worried about whether his two children would be eligible for state scholarships after Amendment 41, an “ethics in government” initiative, was passed by voters in 2006, prohibiting the giving of certain gifts to public employees. Just this week — nearly two years after Amendment 41 was approved by voters — a state panel found that indeed, scholarships of any amount would be permitted under the the law’s provisions.

Amendment 54 would bar political donations from union officials’ kin

Rich-funded plan prohibits political donations in CO

The day after the South Carolina newspaper asked "Who is Howard Rich?", his name turned up in a Colorado news outlet too. A reporter for the Colorado Independent wrote an article about an organization called the Independence Institute, which it called "a conservative think-tank." This year, the Institute has opened a website "extolling the virtues of 'clean government' via the 'clean team,' a supposed grassroots effort meant to back an anti-union proposal being sponsored by the organization."

A Web site has been launched supporting Amendment 54, a measure backed by the Institute that would prohibit both unions and sole-source contractors with the state unions from giving to political campaigns, essentially snuffing out the traditionally pro-Democratic contributions that are given by labor. While the Institute is quick to assail the “out-of-state union money” being used to promote a number of ballot measures submitted by labor groups, the Institute is naturally mum on how its own political efforts have been funded.

Here are the facts.

Clean Government Colorado, the political committee supporting Amendment 54, has raised more than $1.5 million dollars. At least 90 percent of that money has come from the nonprofit organization Colorado At Its Best, created by Institute fellow Dennis Pohill in 2001 and directed by New York libertarian activist and real-estate developer Howard Rich, according to documents filed with the secretary of state’s office.

Because Colorado At Its Best is a nonprofit, it is not required to release the names of its contributors, meaning that the ‘clean’ campaign has been funded primarily from donors who are anonymous.

The pro-Amendment 54 campaign is correct in stating that unions have spent millions in Colorado, including funds that came from out-of-state labor groups and other national union affiliates. But the difference is that members of the public can see exactly where the union money is coming from, and in the example of Colorado’s ‘clean team, that’s just not the case.

Meet Colorado’s anti-union ‘clean team’

Anonymous money floods Colorado too

It's a system: An anonymous donor supplies funding to a non-profit organization, which then supplies funding to a campaign committee, which then promotes a ballot measure that, in some way, meets the needs of the original anonymous donor.

Why does the donor remain anonymous? It's anybody's guess.

Why does the donor contribute to a non-profit organization instead of directly to a campaign committee? Because non-profit organizations don't have to reveal their donors, while campaign committees are required to report that information.

It's a system, and the Colorado Independent found $2.4 million flowing through one in Colorado.

Nonprofits are traditionally “social welfare” organizations that register with the federal Internal Revenue Service, but recently they have been used in Colorado to fund political causes, all while keeping secret the names of donors who have paid for campaign costs or for petition efforts to put a proposal on the ballot.

Morgan Carroll, an Aurora Democrat who is running against Republican Suzanne Andrews in Senate District 29, said she wants to bring further transparency to nonprofit electioneering, possibly by supporting legislation in 2009 that would require certain nonprofit groups to disclose funders or by using state audits to examine the organizations’ political activities.
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“To the extent people really are electioneering and using the [nonprofit] status as a way to avoid disclosures I think we need to address that assuming we can find a clean constitutional way to do it,” Carroll says.

The majority of initiative campaigns this year have not funded their efforts exclusively with anonymous nonprofit funds, according to state campaign-finance records. For instance, Colorado For Equal Rights, a campaign supporting a ballot question to define a fertilized human egg as a person, has disclosed dozens of individual names. Protect Colorado’s Future, another group opposing Amendments 47 and 49, has released records showing that a large majority of the campaign’s funding comes from various labor unions.

In contrast, the Amendment 49 campaign, being supported by the Golden-based Independence Institute conservative think tank, has collected nearly 100 percent of its funding through a nonprofit organization called Colorado At Its Best, receiving more than $1.4 million dollars since February, records show.

Anonymous dough flows into Colorado initiative campaigns